As we all known, IBM and Oracle are close rivals in database industry for the past few years. Last year, IBM and Oracle tied for No. 1 in worldwide new license sales for relational database management systems, as the total market rose more than 10 percent to $7.8 billion, a market research firm said.

The difference in revenues between the two companies was less than $30 million, making it too close to statistically identify who is the leader of relational database market, Gartner Inc. said.

Quoted:
Based on the small amount separating the two companies, IBM had 34.1 percent of the market and Oracle 33.7 percent, or $2.665.9 billion and $2.636 billion, respectively. Microsoft was third with 20 percent, or $1.6 billion. NCR Teradata and Sybase were fourth and fifth, respectively, 2.9 percent and 2.3 percent of the market.

[Source]

PalmOne announced an agreement with PalmSource, Inc. for palmOne to acquire full rights to the brand name Palm. The brand had been co-owned by the two companies since the October 2003 spin-off of PalmSource from Palm, Inc.

Quoted:
palmOne will pay PalmSource $30 million for PalmSource’s 55 percent share of the Palm Trademark Holding Company. Payment will be made in installments over 3.5 years. palmOne will change its company name to Palm, Inc. later this year. As part of the agreement, palmOne has granted PalmSource certain rights to Palm trademarks for PalmSource and its licensees for a four-year transition period.

A new logo and design treatment is believed will be unveiled later this summer. Moreover, mobile-computing products to be launched in the fall are expected to feature the name Palm instead of palmOne.

[Source]

Search engine giant, Google Inc., recorded profit of nearly six times higher than a year earlier last Thursday, April 21, 2005. This news sent shares of Google more than 5 percent higher in after-hours trade to around $215 that day.

Google had net income of $369.2 million, or $1.29 a share, in the first quarter, compared with $64.0 million, or 24 cents a share, a year earlier. Results from the most recent quarter included a $49 million charge related to stock-based compensation.

Total revenue was $1.26 billion, up from $651.6 million a year earlier. Virtually all of the company’s revenue comes from ads that are triggered when Web users type certain key words into Google’s search engine.

[Source]

Can anyone borrow me some money so that I can afford highly priced Google share please? :p

So glad to hear that Dell remains open to AMD.

In what amounts to one of the PC industry’s longest-running sagas of on-again, off-again courtship, Dell Chief Executive Kevin Rollins once again revived speculation that Dell could end its long-standing refusal to use Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Inc. chips.

However, Mr. Rollin also mentioned Dell would only turn to AMD if customers demanded it start using AMD chips and not just Intel’s.

Anyway, hope we can see more new Dell PCs utilizing AMD processors soon.

[Source]